


how it feels to need (while it's slipping away)

by hitlikehammers



Series: wait for me [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And He's Reached His Upward-Limit for Heartbreak in One Lifetime Damnit, Angst (with Eventual Happy Ending), Codependency, Cryostasis, Letters, Longing, Love Letters, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers is Only a Man, Supersoldiers in Love, T'Challa is Better Than You, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You are certain about this?”</i>
</p><p>  <i>Steve doesn’t look up; feels T’Challa's gaze upon him from the doorway without having to see it—labors under the weight, and willingly. Almost in <span class="u">relief</span>, for what it means.</i></p><p>  <i>“Do you have to ask?”</i><br/> </p><p>It was never a question, for Steve, whether or not he'd join Bucky. Whatever Bucky has to say in the letter he wrote for Steve doesn't alter that fact.</p><p>Much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how it feels to need (while it's slipping away)

**Author's Note:**

> Because MORE ANGST in which STEVE IS A HUMAN BEING WHO IS HURTING is necessary. Obviously.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeNtOMynN3k). ~~Though sometimes I like the[remix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCHdpaT_Zk) better.~~
> 
> Love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/), as always <3

“You are certain about this?”

Steve doesn’t look up; feels T’Challa's gaze upon him from the doorway without having to see it—labors under the weight, and willingly. Almost in _relief_ , for what it means.

“Do you have to ask?”

T’Challa doesn’t answer, exactly.

“He would have wanted me to do more.” 

His not-exactly-an-answer, though, is more than sufficient.

“I am unsure what he would have wanted,” T’Challa carries on, voice calm but grieving, somehow—solemn for a thing that hasn’t passed but cannot be kept from the corner of the eye: “regarding this.”

Steve looks up to see a crisp envelope in the King’s hands.

“He wrote letters,” T’Challa explains simply, looking not at Steve but at the paper in his hands: sealed and undisturbed. “Many letters, in fact. In case things did not go as planned,” T’Challa’s fingers dance across the edge of the envelope, twirl the awkward shape with illogical, impossible grace. 

“In case, perhaps, our work took longer than we have envisioned, if it was passed to my children, or even theirs,” T’Challa’s lips go thin. “Or if...”

It does Steve some good, to know that he’s not the only person who can’t think, can’t _speak_ that worse, that particular world-ending _if_. 

“Well,” T’Challa clears his throat gently. “He wrote many letters.”

He looks up, and Steve stops look at him when he aims to make eye contact; only crosses his gaze as he glances down at the letter: sees a name scrawled on the white—blocked by T’Challa’s hand, but a vise around Steve’s heart all the same for the familiar curl of just the hint of an ‘S’ at the start.

 _God_.

“Yours was to be given precisely one year after the procedure,” T’Challa informs him, tone even in the way a man is trained to maintain from birth; in a way Steve’s never known. “If you had not, as he phrased it,” T’Challa’s eyes soften, and his lips twitch as he quotes: “‘Got back on the goddamn merry-go-round.’”

The lift to his mouth straightens again quickly, and his eyes sharpen.

“And yet,” T’Challa stares at him meaningfully, tapping the envelope in hand as a metronome, as the seconds tick, as Steve’s pulse rages against the fist closing in on all sides in his chest: “Here you are. Mere months after granting him rest. And asking to be granted the same.”

“I don’t need your judgement,” Steve says, blank; only just this side of choked. “I need your help.”

“You will have that,” T’Challa shakes his head, only kindness there, and Steve almost feels regret for the edge of his words—but he can’t seem to feel much, really. Just the pressure under his ribs.

“Do not mistake me, Captain,” T’Challa takes two careful, measured steps into the room, and there’s no reason for it to make Steve feel suffocated, pressed in upon: no reason.

But it does.

“It may have taken me longer to see it,” T’Challa speaks softly, between just them—soaked in sympathy: “but you are yourself a victim as much as your friend. As much as my father.”

Steve screws his eyes closed, and keeps them that way. He’s angry, maybe. He’s breathless, for some reason. His heart’s pounding something fierce—his eyes are screwed closed.

His lashes are stuck; wet. He can’t open them.

“I only wonder if it would be his wish for you to see this first,” T’Challa’s voice floats on the thumping of his pulse outside his control; “whether it will do more harm or good.”

Steve sucks in a breath that shivers; he doesn’t know, either.

He doesn’t know if harm or good are either real, here and now. Anymore.

“He asked me to show you a year later,” T’Challa muses, conflicted; “it is not then.”

“Leave it.”

Steve surprises himself by speaking; he still can’t open his eyes.

“Please.” His voice cracks, and it almost masks the soft trail of footsteps as T’Challa draws near, as he rests the envelope on the table at the bedside where Steve’s seated, where Steve’s feet are on the floor next to it—where Steve is shaking. Where Steve can’t figure up from down, left from right.

Where Steve can’t move or live or breathe, without—

“I’ll,” he peels his eyes open. It’s excruciating.

It’s painless, in comparison to the things that really hurt.

“I’ll decide, one way or another,” Steve gestures to the side table, but doesn’t look in that direction, doesn’t see the thing in question. “Take that one off your hands.”

Steve doesn’t even realise he’s being eased backward on the bed until it’s happening. Steve doesn’t realise his legs are being lifted onto the mattress—a mattress, Steve notes, that isn’t too soft, that’s closer to a floor than a bed and oh, fuck, he can’t help himself but to gasp on the sob in him, the sob that is all that he’s become, somehow, and the blankets settle around him softly as T’Challa murmurs—

“Sleep well, Captain.”

And Steve doesn’t realise he’s crying in earnest, now. Not really.

“I’m going to sleep in the morning, Your Majesty,” he slurs, half lost, half overwhelmed, overcome: maybe finally half-succumbed to the ache that’s lived in him so damned _long_ , the need that’s gnawed at him and clawed at him and eaten every piece of him left to stand and rot:

“No sense in sleeping tonight.”

_________________________________

Steve keeps from reaching for the letter for hours in the dark.

But it’s only because he can’t seem to move. It’s only because he can’t seem to think.

It’s only because he wouldn’t be able to see the words, to read them: his vision blurs. 

His heart hurts.

Hours, though.

Hours don’t last forever.

Neither does the dark.

_________________________________

_Stevie,_

_If this makes its way to you, you’ve been exactly as much of a fucking punk as I’d expect._

_But more of one than I’d’ve hoped._

_I tried to tell you to move on, to live until I could come and join you, but you didn’t listen to me, and I didn’t push. Should have. Was too selfish, just to have these last moments with you. More moments. You’re sleeping next to me now, you know. I can barely focus on the words, watching you just breathing. Just being._

_And that’s what you gotta understand, Stevie. I cannot imagine you not being in the time it could take before they thaw me out again. I remember what not being was like. To choose to be that, to cause someone to be like that—to cause someone I care for, someone I love is unthinkable._

_To cause you to do that...Stevie._

_I can’t. I won’t._

_My heart’s yours, punk. You know that. And I’ve got me a lot of flaws, but jealousy ain’t one of ‘em, not anymore. My soul’s only gonna sing to see you out in the world, finding some shred of light, some joy. And if that’s a joy you wanna keep once I’m back, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. Steve, we’ve weathered more. We’ve weathered so much bigger, so much worse than something that’s not worse: something that’s beautiful because it’s you finding something that helps you get closer to whole again._

_I love you. More than the world knows how to handle, I think. I wonder if that’s why it’s been so hard on us, sometimes. When I try to figure out a reason for the things there aren’t any reasons for, because that’s what humans do. I try not to question it, when my mind goes there, as stupid and useless as it all is. It does remind me I’m human._

_I need all the reminders I can get._

_I needed ‘em more, before I got you back._

_I still cannot believe I got you back._

_Anyway, point is: I love you. You remind me that I’m human. There’s this spark in you, punk, that nothing’s ever managed to snuff, and goddamnit, I won’t let me be the one who you’re dumb enough to let manage it after everything. This ain’t a fight you’re walking away from, babydoll. This is… _

_This is Coney Island closing up for the season. So drink some cider and some warm wine like Miss Else used to make. Bundle up for the cold, even if you think you don’t need to. Curl up with a book and a quilt and a warm body that knows you’re the only good thing in the world, and holds you back like you’re as goddamn precious as the stars. Eat peppermint sticks. Watch the snow fall. Put too much sugar in your coffee._

_And when the ice melts—_

_When the ice melts, if you still want me, come see spring with me, yeah? Ride the Cyclone with me. Hold my hand at the top. Feel the swoop in your belly, and know beyond a shadow of any doubt that it ain’t got nothing on what you make me feel when you breathe on my skin, when your mouth touches my lips._

_Meet me when my spring comes. But don’t give up yours in the meantime. Don’t let the seasons stop for you, because of me._

_I find out you did, I won’t be happy, punk. Believe me on that one._

_But fuck all: I will love you through anything._

_All yours. Forever—_

_________________________________

A tall, lithe woman comes for him at daybreak. He’s lying prone, the letter pressed to his chest tight enough to touch his heartbeat, close enough to keep.

She doesn't try to take it from him, just ushers him along to a dimly-lit room, grey marble, thick scents and steam. 

They strip him, and he doesn’t protest. No need for it, as they lower him into a hot bath that’s almost milky in color and texture. They let him soak for an amount of time he can’t name. They take his limbs and rub them vigorously, press oils into the pores.

“You don’t have to—” he tries to interject into the quiet; there’s something about the heat surrounding him in this room that feels wrong on principle. For all that he’s avoided the cold since waking to this century, there is a pull in him now to the ice. To the still. 

“This is not a luxury, Captain,” one of the attendants tells him simply: firm, but not unkind. “Your procedure, the process,” she pauses, searching for words though her hands never stop their ministrations.

“It is not a damage to the body, precisely,” the man at his side, massaging his left arm, picks up the point. “But neither is it a kindness.”

Steve swallows hard; the heat is suddenly all the more oppressive, all the more at odds with what he _needs_.

“Did he—” Steve starts; tries, but his voice cracks hard.

The tall woman who’d retrieved him to begin with, who seems to oversee the process whilst standing at his feet, takes pity upon him at the long, tense quiet of the technicians working at his limbs.

“He refused.” 

Steve blinks. She only hesitates a beat before adding:

“He wished to spend every moment with you that he could.”

Steve’s heart twists. Goddamn contorts itself to try and dodge the bullet of what this feels like but it’s not a fucking bullet, it’s the whole world and the blood inside and the emptiness around and he can damn well feel its fibres starting to pull and fray and break. 

“We respected that,” she nods meaningfully, watching Steve’s undoing with calm but watchful eyes as he begins to shake his head, slow at first and then frantic as he tries to sit up.

“Then I don’t—”

“No.” 

The woman braces hands upon his ankles, as every other pair of hands leaves him. She meets his eyes: a challenge, somehow, and an affirmation. As if somehow she knows what’s in his soul.

He wonders if she’s related to T’Challa somehow.

“You are almost done,” is all she says, and goes to fetch towels as he slides back into the water and the attendants at his sides finish preparing his body for the chamber.

He slides deep enough into the water so it’s not quite so obvious when his tears fall into the basin, mingle and spiral and seep into his skin.

He wears the white that’s haunted his nightmares, every waking moment, every sleeping moment from the moment he left here, and Bucky in the leaving. They stick him with needles, quiet and efficient, and it’s only after he starts to feel tired, starts to feel the thump of his heart turn slow and heavy: it’s only then that the words make sense to ask.

“Can I see,” he breathes, eyes wide: “can I, can...”

A hand rests on his: the woman from the bath, the one who’d woke him.

He recognises, now: she does have T’Challa’s eyes.

“You will be next to him,” she says softly, stroking his knuckles. She leads him to one pod open—next to another, closed and humming low. He can make out a body beneath the sheen of white on glass.

He’d know that body, that face, through thicker; through so much worse.

His heart pumps so fucking _hard_.

“For as long as it takes,” the woman whispers; “you will be next to him.”

He climbs into the chamber. He doesn’t let go of her hand, nor she of his.

“I hope you will find the peace you seek,” she murmurs, squeezing his palm in her own before pulling back.

“May it be well with your soul from here, Captain.”

The chamber closes. The frost comes.

It’s cold. It’s dark.

The last thought Steve knows is clear; bright.

 _Finally_.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
